Yahoo Movies reported that Scott and The Martian scriptwriter Drew Goddard had consulted with Nasa for an extended period during the writing process to help film-makers create the most realistic possible version of Mars. Scott said he investigated Mars’s water early on. “When I first talked to Nasa, we got into all kinds of stuff and I said: ‘So I know you’ve got [these] massive glaciers.’ And [they] said, ‘Yeah, that massive white thing [on the surface of Mars] that gets covered with dust, we think that’s ice ... And I said, ‘Wow! Does that mean there was an ocean? Are we right now what Mars was 750 m years ago?’ And they went, ‘Uh, good question.’ So they want to go up there and find out.”

The Martian review - Ridley Scott's playful sci-fi runs out of fuel before reaching home

Read more

According to a report in the New York Times, Scott said he had seen the photographs of water flows “about two months ago” – meaning that it was too late to incorporate the revelation into the film’s narrative. However, Scott declared himself satisfied with the outcome, as it would have meant potentially changing a key scene in his film. The Martian, which follows an astronaut (played by Matt Damon) attempting to survive on Mars after becoming stranded there, features a sequence in which Damon’s character finds water by using a steaming device and trapping droplets on plastic sheeting – which, according to Scott, “is the most basic form of irrigation. They still do it in Spain that way.”

However, said Scott, had the information of surface water been available earlier, Damon’s character would have dug down to find a glacier. “He would have found the edge of a glacier, definitely. It would be fascinating ... But then I would’ve lost a great sequence.”

The Martian is released on 30 September in the UK and Australia, and on 2 October in the US.